Peter Burgess
New member
Oh, and by the way, welcome back, Graham. You have been sorely missed here.
Peter Burgess said:Graham
I think Mike meant to criminalise the sale of stal. That would remove the incentive some people might have for stealing it. I agree that criminalising the vandalism would solve little. Students are as capable of causing deliberate damage as much as anyone else.
Thanks, but somehow I doubt it.Peter Burgess said:Oh, and by the way, welcome back, Graham. You have been sorely missed here.
I would say that they are, as a whole, probably exactly as likely to cause deliberate damage as anyone else, so why single them out?
Thanks, but somehow I doubt it.
Pete, he did say removal rather than sale
Ship-badger said:I accept Mike's suggestion that £5 is quite attractive if you're broke...
cap 'n chris said:Either the car is stolen or the petrol is siphoned. The car is set on fire in a layby on the way home.
Ship-badger said:Unfortunately Mike (Barnes) this forum is not making the problem worse, but is a very small part of the cause of the problem, which is the internet as a whole in my opinion.
Twenty years ago, if you wanted to visit a cave you had to be very proactive in order to do so. You had to buy a guidebook in order to find out where the caves were, or join a Club. You had to acquire a lamp from somewhere.
Today the locations of many of our finest (and not so fine) caves are recorded on hundreds, if not thousands of websites. There are photographs of some of the most beautiful formations, together with directions to their locations underground. The internet has made this information available to anyone with a computer
So now any twat who wants a bit of stal doesn't have to do much surfing to find out where he can get some. Then all he needs is a £5 headtorch off Ebay and he's away. Publicising the prices that the twat gets for the stal on this forum will certainly not encourage anyone to go and get some.
If we want to stop this then the only answer in the short term, in my opinion, is to gate every cave with any stal of note in it. But we all know what a lot of people will say to this suggestion don't we? As I have said before on another thread, we could campaign for some legislation giving calcite the same sort of protection as ivory, but in the time it would take to happen, the stal hunters could strip every cave of it's stal. The quarrying industry would never let it happen anyway.
No; it will have to be gates!
Peter Burgess said:...
It is illegal to damage a Schedule Monument, but it doesn't stop teenage morons breaking into such places and wreaking havoc. This is a highly topical matter in my area at the moment, so I do know what little regard some idiots have for the law.
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OK, perhaps I was a bit harsh, but we are having serious problems at the moment with kids who are'nt intent on making money, they are just out to cause trouble.